vital functions

[kaberett]

Reading. Me, a few days ago:

... I picked up the bad and naughty book I'm not supposed to read after 8pm because it's too annoying It was annoying

So that's how The Story of Pain (Joanna Bourke) is going. I am a whole 15% of the way into it. She has thus far succeeded in convincing me that she's not, for whatever reason, reliably making her own evaluation of the science (as distinct from philosophy) that she's citing, exemplified by Ronald Melzack's Unethical 1970s Animal Experiments, which I am completely confident based on the two short descriptions I've read... does not actually tell us what Melzack thought it did, at the time he designed and carried out said experiments. The choice to reference it, uncritically, as supporting one's point, in 2014, rather gives the impression that because A Famous Dude who got some things very famously and paradigm-changingly right said it, It Must Be True, and... that's not how we science, folk. It's really not how we science.

I have also made a tiny bit more progress on Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan), read one and a half magazines sent to me by Organisations Various that I feel bad recycling unread but which have a tendency to Accumulate in that state, and some of a Libby sample of Cloistered (Catherine Coldstream) based on one of you mentioning it mid-November, which I have just about got up to on my reading page. Also, I am up to mid-November on my reading page.

Added to the queue are Vespertine (Margaret Rogerson; courtesy of someone mentioning it a while back, probably skygiants, and my library Acquiring A New Copy), The Long Journey of English (Peter Trudgill; a present from my mother, in her capacity as a linguist), and Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes (Rob Wilkins; a loan from my father). For the sake of my spreadsheet of books (with the increasingly inaccurate filename books-2011.ods) I am probably going to be trying to finish rather than start things for the rest of the calendar year (not the Bourke) but we'll see how that goes.

Listening. ... an episode of Elementary that a relative was watching...

Playing. Scrabble! Monument Valley 3. Inkulinati (having another go at beating my head against a run at Master difficulty).

Cooking. Another batch of the quince and squash stew. Two days' worth of minestrone (with bulgur wheat because we are apparently out of tiny pasta, but not that), which worked well as Some Lunches. I think little else of note.

Eating. So much of my mother's cooking various, including a few last tomatoes from her greenhouse (!!!). Also my father's mince pies.

Exploring. Several stonks around Cambridge, including visits to some little free libraries and to various likely locations for snowdrops (mainly the grounds of Churchill, up at the chapel end, where they do indeed exist). Brief trip to Anglesey Abbey, which also has snowdrops coming out and one very enthusiastic daffodil; winter garden remains lovely.

Growing. The pineapple leafs are taller than the (remaining, trimmed) originals, as of... two weeks ago? Ten days? But I think I hadn't yet mentioned and it's still making me smile.

There is one (1) curry leaf cutting that is Not Yet Dead.

Comments

[cesy]

I also have an eager daffodil on my balcony.